The Source for Trucking News, Opinions and Trucking Jobs | Converting Coal to Diesel

Now that oil is over $60 a barrel and gas is over $3.15 a gallon in many places, a lot of people are starting to rethink this whole “let’s import cheap oil” concept when there are so many ideas and resources at home.

I heard a short interview with the Governor of Montana about the process of converting coal to diesel and it’s incredible that we haven’t been doing this. Click on the links and check them out yourself. Germans developed it in WWII and South Africa has been doing it for the last 30 years producing 200,000 barrels a day. A South African company is building or has built plants in China, Australia, Malaysia and Qatar.

Back in 1953 we were producing 1000 barrels a day right here in the US, but that’s about when they started pulling cheap oil out of the sand in the Middle East and it was discontinued because of costs. It’s possible, we’ve done it before and it’s a cleaner diesel with zero sulphur. With the EPA forcing the trucking industy to burn diesel cleaner and cleaner year after year, that should be wonderful news even to the treehugging freaks that put us in this situation. Of course they found a reason to be against all this, but I don’t see them being part of the solution, just a lot of complaining.

We’ve just started building plants in Montana and Pennsylvania (Kentucky, another big coal state should be jumping on this bandwagon too). Governor Schweitzer wants to lead the charge because Montana has 30% of the coal in the
US and 9% of coal on the planet. He’s got “big oil” companies coming to build
the plants. That might keep them involved in this plan, unlike other “alternatives”
that want to put them out of business. Not only is it clean, but
natural gas is a by-product of this process. And if you’re turning coal into liquid you’re not burning and releasing all the by-products into the atmosphere, they can be sold and used elsewhere.

Between this coal process and biodiesel (here and here),
we tell the Middle East and Opec to go pound sand. And if you haven’t
heard or haven’t clicked on the first “here”, that is Willie Nelson,
he’s been pushing biodiesel to help the farmers and he has a few truck
stops selling biodiesel. I haven’t tried it only because I haven’t run
across it yet, but it is gaining popularity and spreading.

Like I said in my post
about ANWR, not only will it get us off of foreign oil, America’s money
stays in America. All the jobs building and operating the plants, stay
in America. Plants that could produce enough gas for the next 150
years, just from coal in America. We might even start exporting
something for a change besides jobs.